


laws of motion

by koizillaa



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Pre-Canon, Winry Rockbell-centric, in which i try to do her justice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28365360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koizillaa/pseuds/koizillaa
Summary: The Rockbell women are renowned for their courage and tenacity.(Winry, on girlhood and grief and holding on tight.)
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Winry Rockbell, Edward Elric & Winry Rockbell, Edward Elric/Winry Rockbell, Garfiel & Winry Rockbell, Paninya & Winry Rockbell, Pinako Rockbell & Winry Rockbell, Sara Rockbell & Urey Rockbell & Winry Rockbell
Comments: 21
Kudos: 44





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Everything belongs to Arakawa. I'm just playing in her sandbox.

Nightmares are a thousand times worse when they are memories.

Winry’s started like this:

Silver spoon, water running down the sink. Onions, garlic and vinegar to the pan. Winry, chop the carrots for me. Oil sizzling as it comes in contact with the heat. Her slices are uneven and a bit chunky, but she’s getting better at this, and she likes it when Granny gives her things to do. It’s cold outside (the window is closed, but she knows) and the sky is uncharacteristically starless. Winry, give me the salt. On your left, dear.

She and Granny work quietly, their hands brushing occasionally when passing ingredients back and forth. The voice on the radio goes on about some conflict in the South, and suddenly Den starts to get restless, wagging his tail left and right wildly and bumping his head against her leg. He almost knocks her out of balance, and Winry turns around, annoyed, to tell him off, but she can’t bring herself to do it when he whimpers and whines like he’s scared. 

Like something terrible is about to happen.

Den runs to the front door and back to the kitchen and then again. Granny swears loudly. Between that and the news and the barking, she almost dismisses the desperate knocking on the door, like someone is trying to kick it down. Winry, get the door.

And then, the armor.

The armor, with the red glow behind its eyes, the red stains littering its chest and shoulders and hands and the metallic ring to its voice when it cried _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please help us, I’m so sorry._

Winry, what’s taking so long?

The armor, carrying her best friend in its arms, tiny, unconscious, soaked in his own blood.

Winry has dreamed about it every night since. She’d wake up screaming too, if Edward didn't keep beating her to it.

-

Ed and Al start learning alchemy around the time she’s five. Granny says they’re very talented, just like their father, but her tone is more daunted than proud. (Winry doesn’t remember Mr. Hohenheim very well, but she knows Ed hates it when people bring him up, so she doesn’t.) 

Winry tries to do it once, after school, in Trisha Elric’s basement, as a way to pass time before her dad comes to take her home. She could go by herself; her house is straight ahead and just down the road, but it’s so rare for her parents to be in Resembool lately that Winry will gladly put up with the dusty shelves that make her sneeze and the scary lighting of the room for a few more moments with them.

The boys are hunched over thick leather-bound books debating how they could turn a bunch of spoons into a sword, and Winry is very bored, so she peers over Alphonse’s shoulder to catch a glimpse of what he’s reading. She chooses one of the pictures to draw on the floor with a piece of chalk: big circle, small circle, triangle, smaller triangle, rectangle. 

Nothing happens. Winry rubs her palm over the lines and tries again. 

When it doesn’t work, Ed says the one she’s trying is too complicated for a newbie like her. He offers to help, glad for a chance to show off his expertise, explaining the principle of deconstruction and reconstruction and guiding her through the steps: big circle, smaller circle, big triangle. But as perfect as it looks, as much as she tries to picture the sparkles that come when Ed and Al do it, Winry can’t make anything pop from the ground. 

When Alphonse brings his hands down to the edge of the circle, a little metal bird comes up. Winry pouts and sulks, and Al tells her it’s okay not to get it on the first try. But Winry doesn’t care about being an alchemist. She’s just sad to be left out. 

Ed rolls his eyes, but he draws a different circle and makes her a doll to cheer her up. 

(It works.)

-

On the way home, Dad carries a wooden box full of vegetables for dinner with one hand, and the other holds hers tightly. Dad’s hands are so big and always so warm. Winry swings her arm back and forth. It hinders his balance a bit, but he never tells her to stop.

Her mother is horrified to see her dress and hands and cheeks dirty with powder. She looks so tired in her work apron and dress, and her hair is coming undone from her ponytail. Still, Mom kisses the top of her head and draws her a bath and they sing together as they wash, brush and trim Winry’s hair.

“Ed and Al were playing with alchemy, but when I tried it I couldn’t make anything special happen. It made me sad”, she tells her mother as she puts on her night clothes, pouting only a little. “So Ed gave me a doll.”

Mom’s brow furrows as she smoothes the back of Winry’s head. “That was very nice of him. Edward is a very good friend, isn’t he?”

“Al is much nicer. But Ed can be very nice too, sometimes.”

Dad and Granny make soup together - the kind she likes, with cheese and bell peppers. After dinner, Winry feels very full and sleepy, but Mom pulls out a big book (even bigger than the ones Ed and Al have at their house) from the shelf and sets it on the table in front of her. 

“Would you like to help us with our work?”

Winry is suddenly wide awake with curiosity, and she nods frantically as Dad picks her up by the underarms and sits her down on his knee. Mom pulls out a chair next to them. It’s an anatomy book _(a-na-to-my)_. The pictures are kind of icky, and there are so many complicated names, but her father takes her hand in his, so big and so warm, and they trace the words together.

Mom is exhausted, but she’s always very gentle. _This is the thumb metacarpal. Can you say it with me?_

_Me-ta-car-pal._

_Show me the palmar interossei now. That’s very good, dear._

It’s hours before she can pronounce the names of the little bones and muscles without tripping over her syllables. Winry’s eyelids feel heavy and it’s hard not to yawn, but Mom and Dad look so proud she thinks she could keep pointing at pictures and reading their names forever.

“See, Win? What you did today was amazing”, Dad says as he tucks her into bed. “I don’t know a kid your age who knows their phalanges from their metacarpals.”

Winry smiles so wide her cheeks hurt. Dad kisses her forehead very sweetly. “There are so many things you can do that are so special, Win”, he tells her. She believes him.

-

Every night, they sit around the kitchen table and Winry reads from her parents’ books, Dad always guiding her hand with his own and Mom always correcting her diction. She studies nerves and tendons and cartilage and it makes sense to her, the way everything connects.

Granny brings them tea, and looks pleased with her progress. “If you can learn the way everything in there functions'', she says, and taps twice with her index _(in-dex)_ at a drawing of a leg, “I’ll show you how to build your own.”

Winry looks at her and _beams_.

-

Winry, Ed and Al do their homework together on her porch and play tag with Den, who is always the fastest and wins every time. 

Ed insists that he’s cheating, to which Al replies, outraged, that Den can’t cheat because he’s a dog and he has a metal leg, and Ed says that’s _precisely why_ it’s cheating. Granny tells him it’s not Den’s fault his legs are so stumpy. Winry laughs, and Ed chases her around the tree in the backyard for hours, but he can never catch up. She likes this way better than scribbling with chalk on a dusty floor.

-

Winry turns six, and a snowstorm hits Resembool. It’s the first they’ve had in years, and everyone rushes outside to feel the rare cold and catch the tiny snowflakes on their tongues.

Ed and Al use their alchemy to make three feet tall snowmen with skulls (Ed’s decision) for coat buttons. Their mother is absolutely delighted. 

Winry can’t make sculptures out of circles like them, but Dad helps her roll big balls of ice to build her own snow _-woman_ and Mom helps her find twigs that have the perfect size to make hands with a lateral thumb pinch, which, in her opinion, is _much_ cooler than skulls.

They have a snowball fight and take turns sliding from one border of the lake that froze overnight to the other in pairs: Al and Trisha, Mom and Granny, Ed and Winry, Dad and Den.

It’s a perfect day. Her family, the laughter, the snow. She wants it to last forever.

-

Winter fades into spring. Inevitably, the ice begins to melt. 

It’s Winry’s first lesson on temporality. 

(It’s also the one that will hurt her the least.)

-

The first signs of the war reaching the small town come as a blessing in disguise. People come and go every day, and suddenly the baker can afford a new sign, Mrs. Adler is able to get her mill fixed, and the train station gets repainted. 

There is a lot of work for Granny, too. The people (they come from Ishval, not too far from here, Mom tells her) want new legs, new hands, new feet, so much that the workshop overflows and they start using the kitchen to store the finished automail pieces. 

Dad helps her the best he can, and even though he is a bit clueless with the procedures - _Yuriy, how is it possible that my own son cannot tell the difference between bolts and studs? Pass me that wrench_ -, his medical knowledge does come in handy. Winry watches them work, combining flesh and metal, absolutely fascinated.

On Sunday, she gets a new doll and a new dress. 

The dress is pink, and a little too big for her. The doll is very pretty, prettier than the one Ed had given her, but she doesn’t like it as much.

The soldiers come on Tuesday.

-

“The people there need our help”, Mom says as they pack their suitcases. Her hands tremble slightly when she pulls out her apron from the wardrobe. Winry is too focused on clinging tightly to the skirt of her mother’s dress to notice, and too young to fully understand what it means. Mom smiles. “But don’t you worry, my brilliant girl. We’ll be home before you know it.”

“We won’t be away too long, Win. You be good to Granny, and take care of things while we’re gone.” Dad crouches down and kisses both their cheeks. Winry’s vision is blurry with tears. “Goodbye, mother.”

The two men in blue uniform say nothing. They stand very still, like they are made of stone. Their eyes are trained straight ahead, as if looking at something beyond Winry, beyond the house, beyond Resembool.

Dad rises to his feet. Mom blinks up to the sky, a pretty combination of gold and pink, and smoothes invisible creases in her scarf. She gives Winry one last smile, before turning around and letting the men in blue lead the way. 

Winry and Granny watch the road for a long time after they are gone.

“Your parents are very brave and selfless people, child”, Granny says, and only the smallest quiver betrays her steady voice. “You should be proud of them.”

It’s not fair, she thinks, that only Mom and Dad have to be brave and selfless. She wishes she could be brave and selfless too, and do something to help, but she has to stay home and wait for them to come back.

Winry cries on the doorstep until her head hurts. She doesn’t go to school. Ed and Al stop by, but she is too sad to play. Al gives her a hug, and Ed pats her head and tugs on her hair in a rare display of affection. Den doesn’t leave her side until Granny comes down from the workshop and declares it’s time for dinner.

-

At night, she sneaks down the long hallway, past Granny’s room, making sure not to step on the floorboard near the door that’s loose and squeaks loudly, and pulls the textbook out from the shelf.

She misses her father’s warmth and her mother’s voice as she outlines the pictures and tries to decipher the labels around them by herself: _hy-po-the-nar, bra-chi-a-lis, su-pi-na-tor_. It’s not the same, and she has to make little notes on a piece of paper to remember everything. It doesn’t feel special.

Winry cries a little more, quietly, before falling asleep in the candlelit kitchen, her head between her elbows.

-

She wakes up in her bed with the covers pulled up to her chin. There is a brand new journal sitting on the nightstand, and the small piece of paper with her notes is tucked neatly between the first two pages. Next to it is a book she recognizes from seeing Dad go through it many times in the last few months: _The Mechanic’s Handbook: a guide to automail prosthetics,_ by Saskia J. Reznik.

Winry brings them to the table at breakfast. Granny is smoking her pipe near the window. They eat fruit and sip tea as the colors in the sky change from purple to pink to gold. Mom always said Resembool had the most beautiful mornings. Winry wonders if she can see the same colors wherever she is right now. She hopes she can. 

“These are trying times, child. We all have to make sacrifices”, Granny says, eyes cloudy behind her round glasses. 

The empty chairs around them seem impossibly lonely. 

She gives Winry’s books a pointed look. “Come on. Let’s put those things to use. You have a lot to learn, and there is work to be done.”

-

Winry watches Granny in the workshop. She picks up the phone _\- Rockbell Prosthetic Limb Outfitters, how can we help you? -_ and makes notes on anatomy and what kind of metal or steel or fiberglass is best for what. She keeps the last pages of her journal to write down a line for every day until her parents come home. It shouldn’t take too long. They promised they would be home soon.

(She listens to the radio when there’s news about the war, and tries, very hard, not to be scared. It’s difficult. She worries.)

-

Danny Fletcher is a boy from school a year older than Winry and Edward. His mom runs the shoe store. His dad has a coughing fit and faints in the playground while playing with his little sister on the seesaw.

A doctor comes down from East City to help (Mom and Dad have been gone for exactly forty-one days), and he says it’s an epidemic that’s been escalating around the area for months. There are still no known causes, and no known treatments.

-

People keep getting sick. School is suspended indefinitely, doctor’s orders, to try and keep the illness from spreading. 

Mr. Fletcher dies after a week of broth and bed rest. Winry thinks Mom and Dad could have saved him, if the soldiers hadn’t taken them away.

-

It’s sixty-four days until Winry’s hair starts getting too long. The bangs brush her eyes and itch, but Mom is not there to trim it, so she tries to do it herself with a pair of big scissors from the workshop, standing on a chair in the bathroom because she doesn’t quite reach the mirror yet. The outcome is absolutely horrible, uneven and choppy, and Winry’s tears come like water breaking a dam. 

Granny finds her sitting on the floor, puffy eyed, blotchy-skinned, trying to clean up the hair around her with her bare hands. “Winry!”, she cries out, snatching the scissors from the floor and stuffing them in her apron. “Oh, child, are you hurt?”

Winry denies it with a shake of her head, and braces herself for a scolding for her mess. Instead, Granny helps her stand with a wrinkly hand on her elbow, and pulls her into a tight embrace. She tucks her face in the crook of Granny’s neck and cries a little more, uttering an apology in a string of broken syllables.

They sweep the floor together. When they are done, Granny fetches small scissors, the ones Mom used, and shows Winry how to properly cut hair.

“It’s okay, Winry”, she says, stroking Winry’s cheek with a delicate, feathery touch. “Don’t worry. It will be okay.”

-

Winry runs out of pages in her journal.

The doctor from East City leaves.

A week later, Trisha Elric starts coughing. 

-

Edward is angry in his grief. He scowls all the time, and picks fights over silly things, and refuses to drink his milk. He snaps at Winry more often than not. She tries to be understanding, she really does, but it still hurts when he pushes her away.

Unlike his brother, Alphonse handles it quietly. He’s always been calm and gentle, but now he just looks lost in mourning. He follows Ed around a lot, and goes along with what he says.

Granny wants the boys to stay with her and Winry. Al is unsure. They argue for days, and every time Ed promptly refuses, but at least they promise to come over for dinner every day. It’s a start.

-

Sometimes, Granny sends Winry up the road to leave some clean clothes at the boys’ house, and she finds Al alone outside, on the swing, like he’s waiting for something. His head is always down, and his legs dangle absentmindedly far above the ground. 

-

“Hi, Al.”

“Hi, Winry.”

“Do you want me to push?”

“Not really.”

-

Winry leaves her basket by the tree and climbs on the seat next to him. Al gives her the tiniest smile, and rests his head on her shoulder.

He’s just turned five, and he’s still small, so they fit together side by side perfectly. 

They sit in silence, and watch as the twilight fades and the moon rises. The stars come out. 

(It’s not much, not really. But sometimes, it’s enough.)

-

The first thing Winry builds on her own is a thumb. It’s for a set of four fingers for Mr. Roberts, the town butcher, who lost his own in a work accident. She’s seven years old, almost eight, and she can finally do things in the workshop besides passing screwdrivers and picking up calls.

She’s done maintenance for Den’s leg before, but this feels very different. It has two carefully measured phalanges and a perfect metacarpal metal-bone connected by bolts and wires that _she_ assembled, with her own two hands and tools. Granny lets her attach it to the port herself.

Mr. Roberts winces at first, when the nerves connect, and then wiggles his new fingers. Winry doesn’t have the words to describe the joy she feels as she witnesses her creation be brought to life before her eyes. It feels so, so _special_ and she’s so happy, even Ed smiles and tells her it’s pretty awesome.

Winry takes a picture with Mr. Roberts and sends it to her parents, along with a letter describing her process and how she did it all by herself.

(She doesn’t mention Aunt Trisha’s passing. Mom and Dad will be home soon enough, and Winry knows they must be going through a hard time in Ishval. There’s no need to make them sad now.)

-

Summer brings horrible storms that never seem to stop. It’s cold and wet all the time, they can never go out without a raincoat anymore, and everyone is panicking because of the river that’s about to overflow - the trench they dug is already full, and they are running out of time.

Salvation comes in the form of a housewife who happened to be passing by.

So far, Winry has only ever seen alchemy be used by her friends to make gifts and fix broken vases, but Mrs. Curtis, as she introduces herself, claps her hands together and they stare at her in awe as she makes a big wall rise from the earth like magic, like a miracle, to keep the water contained. 

She’s the most powerful alchemist they've ever seen.

(That fact does not escape Edward and Alphonse.)

-

The boys want to leave with Mrs. Curtis to study alchemy, and, for better or worse, she’s willing to take them as her apprentices.

“We’re going. You can’t stop us.” The determination in Ed’s eyes is almost chilling. He’s always had a way to assert himself in discussions no matter the topic. It’s as annoying as it is beguiling. _Of course_ he would throw a fit over this, Winry thought.

“You’re right. I can’t”, Granny says. “But I can at least make sure you check in every once in a while.”

Mrs. Curtis - _call me Izumi, dear_ \- and her husband come to their house for dinner. Mr. Curtis - _just Sig, please_ \- helps Granny with the cooking, and it’s the best meat they’ve had in a very long time. Winry knows it’s awful to resent them when they are so nice to her, but she can’t help it. She doesn’t want her friends to leave.

For all Winry’s sourness, Ed and Al look almost giddy in their seats. Edward even drinks his milk. When they are dismissed from the kitchen for the adults to talk, Winry flips through the pages of _The Mechanic’s Handbook_ (which she has read from cover to cover over five times, more interested in her father’s scribbled footnotes than in the basic technical knowledge she already knows by heart) as the two gush about all the things they will learn to do.

“Why are you being so quiet, Winry?”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to _cry,_ gearhead.”

She would have, but Winry refuses to do it out of sheer annoyance. She doesn’t like it when Ed teases her, but it is still much better than to see him sad. Or gone. 

Winry sighs in resignation.

“Just promise me you’ll be safe, dummies.”

-

Edward and Alphonse had been a constant presence in her life ever since she was born. She had barely any memories without them. Through grass and mud and crayons, there had been Winry, Ed and Al. Being apart from the boys seemed something impossible until she was forced to do it. 

Winry has never left Resembool, and she has no idea what the world holds in store for them. She wishes she did. 

She worries. 

-

_Dear Winry,_

_My darling, my brilliant girl, your mother and I miss you terribly. We apologize for not sending news sooner. There is still a lot of work for us to do here (your mother is dealing with an emergency as I write this), but not a day goes by that we don’t think of you and wish we were home to hug you very tight. It is the very thought of you that will get us through these hard times._

_I’m very glad to know that you’re having fun helping Granny with the automail business. She said in her letter that you are outstanding, and a better mechanic than your father ever was. Your mom won’t let me hear the end of it - I’ve already been bested by my daughter, and she’s not even a decade old yet! But that does not make me sad. Quite the opposite, really. It brings me great joy, and I could not be prouder._

_It is scary to think that my little girl is growing up so fast, but you become more clever and beautiful by the day, and that is exactly what your mom and I always wanted for you: to live your life to its fullest potential. To become everything you could ever possibly want to be._

_We are so sorry we couldn’t come home for your birthday. Happy birthday, Winry. We love you with all our hearts._

_We’ll see you soon,_

_Mom and Dad._

-

There is no big celebration. They bake a cake, and Winry blows out the candles after dinner. Granny gets her a new pair of gloves and the journal she’s been asking for. She tucks the letter between the first and second page, and adds a line to the last. 

Happy birthday, Winry.

-

Some nights it’s impossible not to cry. Winry loves Den and Granny and her lessons a lot, and she is grateful for them, but she feels so lonely, coming back from school alone and swimming in the lake alone and doing homework on the porch alone. She misses her parents. She misses Ed and Al. Even their stupid alchemy. She misses the snowmen, and that perfect day. It feels like so long ago.

-

Winry finds the most comfort sorting through her mother’s books and her father’s notes (even though she doesn’t need them anymore), and taking on more complicated projects in the automail workshop. She loves the rugged, beautiful forms of her designs, the hum of the bearings as they come alive, and the satisfaction of her clients with their restored mobility. She loves their sighs of relief and the knowledge that she helped someone.

She wonders if Mom and Dad feel the same way about their patients, in Ishval.

-

Edward and Alphonse return after almost exactly six months (she kept count) to a snowless, boring winter, and everything almost falls back into the old rhythm right away.

They walk to school and back home together, they come to her house for dinner at night. They play with Den in the backyard, sometimes, and one day the boys freeze the lake with magic-like alchemy so they can skate. Edward is all puffed up, self-satisfied smirks and Winry rolls her eyes at his smugness. (It’s a fun day, the best she’s had in awhile, and even she has to admit it’s kind of amazing how much they’ve improved.) 

So it’s almost exactly the same.

Except Ed stops paying attention in class ( _shut up, Winry, you're the one who sleeps through Geography every time,_ he complains when she points it out), and he never joins her to do homework anymore. The boys spar a lot now - Winry never knows when one of them will get tackled to the floor or tossed across the room. She doesn’t see them as much as she used to - Ed and Al are always _busy_ and reading those weird, old books like they’re obsessed. They say they are doing _‘research’,_ but they refuse to tell her about what. 

It’s so frustrating, when they keep secrets like that.

-

There are two years and four months worth of lines written on both her journals combined the day the letter arrives.

Winry sees Elias Russel, the mailman, making his way slowly up the paved road from her bedroom’s balcony and runs downstairs to greet him. He’s only just turned twenty - a child still, Granny always says -, and he’s always so nice to her, with his corny jokes and boyish grins. But there are no smiles today. 

“Mrs. Rockbell. Miss Rockbell,” he says by way of greeting, none of his usual how-do-you-dos or the-weather-is-looking-greats. He reaches inside his satchel. “News from the front.” 

Granny takes the envelope from his hands, but he doesn’t leave immediately. Instead, he lingers on for a moment, and whispers something like _I’m so sorry_. Winry watches the exchange from the doorframe, not allowing her curiosity to travel further than her bobbing leg. 

But Granny does not come inside. 

She doesn’t move at all. 

“So the dogs can come down from Central to demand that my son and his wife serve their war”, she growls, “but they can’t be bothered to look me in the face when they tell me they are dead because of it.” 

Elias looks down, and his knuckles turn white as they tighten around the strap of the satchel. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

Winry’s breath hitches. The room feels like it’s closing in. _No. Please_. 

Granny does not come inside. 

She sinks to her knees on the grass, and Winry rushes to her side, trembling, tripping, because the world is spinning and she cannot _breathe_. 

She makes out the words _Mrs. Rockbell… on behalf of the Central Military Command of Amestris... we regretfully inform… we extend to you and your family the deepest condolences of our…_

Winry feels sick.

_No._

Their hands grip each other’s elbows. A wail reaches her ears, but she’s not sure if it’s hers of Granny’s. The letter lay discarded on the floor - a small piece of paper, the bearer of the world’s most terrible news. _God, no, please. Let this be a mistake. Please. We are not ready._

“My son”, Granny gasps and shakes and grabs at her arms, hands and shoulders blindly, in a display of raw distress Winry has never witnessed before. _“My son.”_

_We all have to make sacrifices._

_Please,_ Winry could scream. She’s almost sure she does. _Let this be a mistake. We’re not ready. I’m not ready._

-

The funeral is quick, crowded, and purely symbolic. There is no coffin to bury. Their bodies had not been sent home. The gravestones are placed side by side in the cemetery at dawn. 

_Yuriy Rockbell (1873 - 1908)_ , and _Sarah Rockbell (1879 - 1908)_ to his right.

Winry stares up at the sky with painfully swollen eyes, and the stunning, breathtaking sky stares right back at her, shining every shade of orange and pink and yellow with the rising sun. Resembool had the most beautiful mornings, Mom had told her. The colors spill over the hills and the houses and paint the town golden. But the world had no right to be so beautiful. It shouldn’t be. Not now. Not for this moment.

_I’m not ready. Please._

People come to pay their respects. The Adlers and their son, who had been delivered by Mom five years ago, and Mr. Meyer, who Dad had nursed back to health through a horrible fever, and countless others. All people whose lives her parents had touched, somehow. 

_Brave and selfless. You should be proud of them._

They trade hugs with Granny, and they look at Winry with so much pity it’s suffocating. 

Edward holds her hand through the entire ordeal. Any other day he would have teased her, would have called her a baby. But not today. He doesn’t let go when their palms get cramped and clammy, and he doesn’t say a word when she starts crying into his shirt again and again. For that, at least, she’s grateful.

-

The hardest part is that she has so little to remember them by. There is the distant memory of a gentle voice, and a warm touch on her cheek, and a letter tucked between the pages of her journal. But Mom’s clothes, after so much time, don’t smell like Mom anymore. Dad’s handwriting in the margins of _The Mechanic’s Handbook_ has become so entangled with her own she can barely tell them apart. 

Winry is nine years old, and she knows how to cut her own hair, how to mend her clothes and how to work metal and wire into limbs. She knows that the snow melts, and the laughter eventually dies out, and she knows that she cannot keep people from leaving.

She should know what her mother’s laugh sounded like. She should know what kind of tea her father liked to have. She has a hunch it might have been chamomile, but that’s not enough. She had a right to know, and it leaves such a bitter taste in her mouth that she doesn’t.

-

In the darkness of her room, Winry brings her hands to her face and concentrates very hard with her eyes squeezed shut. It never feels right. Her palms are always too small, and her fingers a little too calloused.

Winry watches Granny watch the road, smoking her pipe, lost in thought like she’s not really there, every day without fail. Sometimes it’s a moment in the morning, a dark glance before heading down quietly to the workshop. Some days she sits on the stairs and doesn’t move for hours.

Of course, no one ever comes. Not the blue soldiers, not Elias Russel, not Mom and Dad. Grief eases on to them gradually, like the fading of twilight. They are not coming back. 

(Winry understands now, why Ed used to be so angry.)

-

There are days when it’s hard to be at home. Days when she can’t be around the ghosts of her parents and the shell of her grandmother, when her legs seem to move on their own accord as they carry her through the paved road straight ahead and up the hill.

Alphonse finds her on the swing. 

(“Hi, Winry.”

“Hi, Al.”)

And he hauls himself up to sit beside her. He is seven now, almost eight, and still small but not so small anymore. They had both grown over the summer. Winry has to move to the side a little more so they can be comfortable.

(Still, it’s impossible for their knees not to touch, and she comes to the terrible, terrible realization that one day, they won’t fit in the swing together anymore.)

Al puts his cheek on her shoulder. She leans her head on top of his. 

(It breaks her heart a little.)

-

Winry watches Granny watch the road. 

She reads her letter, the only letter, over and over again, and commits the message to memory. ( _We wish we were home to hug you tight. We’ll see you soon._ It sends ripples of shameful anger to her heart. _So why did you leave? Why didn’t you come back?)_

Winry finds it that she hates going to the market now, or the park or even school. People are always so friendly, so eager to see how she’s doing. They smile too big, and it feels so wrong. _How are you? How is Pinako? It’s such a shame… such a young girl. Let us know if there is anything we can do._ It _is_ a shame, and _of course_ there is nothing you can do because Mom and Dad are gone, _dead,_ and they are never coming back. Winry can’t say that, or she won’t, and the conversation always takes a turn down a road she refuses to walk. It makes her heart clench and her eyes sting and her vision blurry with tears. So she stops going. 

Sometimes, when Granny is out and Winry is alone at home, she’ll slip inside her parents’ bedroom and look for - something. She’s not really sure what. She tries to find it in her mother’s jewelry box and her father’s tie drawers. She scrutinizes every detail of the picture on the nightstand. 

It shows Mom and Dad and herself outside on a sunny day. She looks very little, with her hair cropped just below her jaw. Dad is smiling. Mom wears a pretty blue dress. Winry touches their happy faces and tries to drag memories from the golden hue of the trees and the way they lean into each other. (But like the necklaces and the earrings and the ties, the picture is just a picture and nothing else.)

After weeks of staring at it, Winry morbidly reasons that Mom and Dad wouldn't mind anyway, and she takes the portrait to her room and sets it on an empty shelf above the vanity that had partially become a workbench for automail over the years. It’s hardly any more comforting than the letter or her own calloused touch, but it’s something to have besides scentless clothes and faded words.

She’s tracing the edges of the frame for the millionth time instead of doing her homework when a quiet cough snaps her out of her reverie. Granny stands in the doorway, her slumped shoulders taking inches from what little height she has left. Her hands, on the doorframe, drop as their eyes meet. 

“Winry, dear, it’s almost time for dinner.” Her voice is almost a sigh. Almost soundless, like the way she moves lately. Winry can’t even tell for how long she had been standing at the door. 

“Okay. I’ll join you downstairs in a minute”, she smiles, and turns around to tidy up her space. Instead of leaving, Winry sees Granny approach her out of the corner of her eye, and then rest a cold hand on her shoulder. There is a pregnant pause, a sigh, and suddenly: “I remember that day. A week before your fifth birthday, I believe. May I?” Granny gestures to the picture, and Winry nods again as she takes the frame in her hands. 

Granny looks at it for what feels like years, with the same empty gaze she stared at the road with in the morning, and when she touches Dad’s face her eyes turn glassy with tears. “We stayed up all night filling helium balloons for the party. He was so excited, my wonderful, stupid son, he cost us two hours of work because he kept sucking out the gas to make your mother laugh.” Granny stifles something half-sob, half-laugh with an oil stained palm.

And Winry is suddenly overcome with jealousy - awful and green and wrong, because the memory clearly hurts Granny. Why does Winry hurt so much, if she can’t even remember? If she couldn’t remember, couldn’t she at least be spared the pain? She closes her hand (too small, always too small) in a fist. She just wishes there was something, anything…

She only realizes she’s crying when she feels the salty taste in her mouth. Thankfully, Granny doesn’t see it, completely lost in her own ocean of grief. Winry rubs her face furiously, and by the time her grandmother looks up, she’s already mostly composed herself.

Granny seems to notice her discomfort, though, because Granny always notices. She smoothes the back of Winry’s head with a tight lipped smile. “Wait here for a second”, and then she disappears in the dim hallway. Her return is announced shortly after by the soft squeak of Den’s leg (Winry decides she’ll have a look at it in the morning). Granny sits on the bed, a pile of books in each arm, and beckons Winry to the spot next to her with a nod. _Come, dear._

There are no titles on the covers, only numbers. Granny picks up _1870 - 1875_ , leather bound and slightly beat up, opens it on her lap, and Winry realizes they are not books at all. The pages are filled with photographs, black and white and sepia toned, of icy mountains and towering buildings and even old Resembool. Winry recognizes from _Automail Daily_ numerous sights of Rush Valley, all featuring a tall, dark haired young woman with a very familiar pipe held between her lips. 

“You lived in _Rush Valley?_ ” she marvels, shifting closer to get a better look. 

“Yes, of course”, Granny chuckles humorously, like she’s thinking of a joke she’d heard a hundred years ago. “The Boomtown of the Broken-Down. Won quite a few prizes there, too. They should be stored in the attic - I’ll show you some other time.”

The pictures show Pinako Rockbell in her twenties, often surrounded by different people in different taverns and by scrap metal and wire in lofty workshops. There is Granny and a group of young women - all of them with patterned bandanas in their hair and their coveralls tied at the waist - posing next to a fountain in the town square. Granny holding an automail arm, face dirty with grease. Granny smoking her pipe in a crowded cafe, brow quipped up and a challenging grin on her face. Granny with shorter hair, then glasses, then long hair again. The scenery varies rapidly, revealing both a lot and very little, and Winry absorbs all the information in wonder.

Granny halts the swift page turning when she comes across a photo of herself and a towering man outside of the South City train station. It’s not particularly eye-catching; a slightly blurred monochrome taken from too far away to see their expressions properly. They have their arms looped together. Each has a large suitcase at their feet, and when she squints a bit, Winry can see that their hands are entwined between them. The sloppy scribble at the bottom reads _Pinako and Maxim, 1872._

“Your father’s father”, Granny says, breaking the silence, “was a Drachman traveller.” 

“A Drachman traveller?”, she echoes. Winry had always assumed her family was from Resembool since - well, forever. The thought of her bloodline extending anywhere beyond the winding hills of eastern Amestris had never crossed her mind. Her grandmother smiles fondly, and rests two digits over the man’s silhouette with unprecedented tenderness. 

“We were together for only a short time, and he and I parted ways before I knew I was pregnant. Now, don’t ask me what he was doing so far south in that metal wasteland - he sure as hell was no mechanic - because that’s a story for another time...”

-

Granny had raised Dad by herself in Resembool. He was born during the most unforgiving of storms and it had not, by any means, been an easy birth. ( _He put me through such a hard time, my Yuriy, I decided right then and there that he would be my one and only. No way in hell I was going to go through_ that _again,_ Granny had chuckled _._ ) 

His favorite toy as a child had been a yellow stick horse Granny had stitched together herself, right up until the day he discovered he could ride real horses. This love affair ended as soon as the pony he’d been placed on knocked him down with a trot. He was good friends with little Trisha Elric, who adored him in that way children do, and she would follow him everywhere around town. He was soft spoken and kind, and he decided he wanted to be a doctor when Michaela Wright (who would later become a great client of Granny’s) was hit by a carriage and he saved her life by making a tourniquet out of his belt to stop the bleeding on her leg until they could get her to the clinic. He left home after his eighteenth birthday to study medicine in East City University, where he later met his wife, Sarah.

Mom was a city girl. She’d been born in Central and was accustomed to the hectic lifestyle of the capitol, but she was immediately swooned by Resembool’s wide grassy hills and small town pleasures. Granny loved her right away. ( _Such a sweet girl, your mother was. None of that pompous attitude the snobs from Central usually have. And a great dancer, too._ ) She and Dad got married in spring. They delivered a lot of the babies of Winry’s generation - including the youngest Elric boy. The town events she liked best were the Summer Sheep festival and the carnival at the end of the year. Her favorite color was green. She loved to bake.

Her favorite tea, Winry learns, was chamomile.

Dad's was peppermint.

-

Her parents would never return, but her grandmother does, little by little, become more herself again as they hunch over photo albums and relive memories of easier days. Granny’s voice gains back it’s firm, witty tone, and day after day her eyes seem more clear, her hands more steady. It helps them both. Winry listens to her stories carefully, hanging on to every word, savoring the chance of getting to know the people who, besides Granny, had loved her the most in their lives. It’s not the same, but it’s something.

One day, after an anecdote that left her particularly nostalgic, Winry gathers up the courage to ask the question that has been lurking on the back of her mind since the day her parents left.

“Granny?”

“Hm. Yes, dear?”

“Do you ever think about how it would have been like... if Dad wasn’t a doctor? If he’d become a mechanic, like you… like us?”

Because Winry does. She’s tried for years to keep those thoughts away, hidden, buried, because they were selfish and egotistical and unkind. Because they were exactly everything her parents were _not,_ and it hurt to think of herself as such. 

There is a pause. Granny takes off her glasses, and turns to face Winry, reaching for her hand and clasping it tightly between her own. She opens her mouth, but the words don’t come for a long, heavy moment. Winry holds her breath.

“I can’t say that I haven’t wondered. If he and Sarah had escaped the drafting, somehow. If he had become a mechanic… But we can’t afford to think like that, child. Of the lives we don’t choose. Yuriy… ” Granny trails off, but she doesn’t slip away this time. She looks down to their joined hands. “My boy… your father… his calling was to help people. As was your mother’s. As is yours.” 

Her heart hurt like it was being squeezed by an invisible hand. Winry had thought she had already cried enough, but it’s still impossible to hold back a sob. Granny kisses her forehead lightly. Wrinkly fingers dab gently at the wetness on her cheeks, then move down to rest on the spot right above her heart.

“I know it’s hard, child. I am angry - I miss them terribly, too. They were noble people who suffered a most unjust fate. But this is how we honor them. Their sacrifice. They wouldn’t want us to regret who they were.” Granny raises a hand, this time, to wipe away tears of her own. “We carry them with us. We keep their memory alive, and we love them.”

-

It’s easier after that. 

The ache in her chest did not go away. Not completely. It was still there. It still stung. Winry still fell asleep with her hand pinned under her cheek, and Granny still watched the horizon with grief in her eyes from time to time.

But her heart stops breaking at the sight of the sunrise and it’s array of beautiful colors. When people in town look at her sadly and ask her how she’s doing, she doesn’t feel like screaming anymore, and she can finally return their kindness with a sincere smile. Change eases into her core slowly. Surely. 

So it’s a little easier.

-

In the years that come, Winry will design, build and repair countless different models of prosthetics and she will fall irreversibly in love with her craft. She will excel in Physics and Biology in school and score admittedly mediocre grades in Geography.

She and Al will take turns pushing each other on the swing with laughter bubbling in their bellies, because they can, and she won’t think too hard about how there is progressively less and less space between them on the seat, and eventually, they’ll get Ed to push them both at the same time. (He will, of course, whine endlessly about how unfair it is because _Winry, it’s_ my _swing,_ you _should be pushing_ me.)

Winry will pay no mind to the boys’ secrecy beyond the occasional annoyed complaint, instead dismissing it for either a boy thing or a sibling thing. Granny will laugh good-naturedly, unsuspectingly, and say it’s an alchemist thing. 

And sure enough, Pinako Rockbell would soon see how terribly right she was.

-

A starless night.

Silver spoon, water running down the sink.

Onions. Garlic. Vinegar. Chopping carrots. News on the radio. Den is getting restless. Winry, pass the salt.

Someone is knocking on the door.

Winry, get the door.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took a lot longer than expected and it's still somehow shorter than I originally intended. I hope I haven't tweaked it to death.
> 
> Here goes nothing.

Winry knows about people being paralyzed by fear. 

She remembers that one time when she was eight and a flock of thirty or so sheep got scared by a dog and attacked little Misha Manning on the way to school. Misha had stayed petrified on the road, even as she saw them advancing, even as they knocked her down and shattered the bones in her right arm. When people would ask why she didn't run, she’d say, _I couldn’t move. It happened so fast. I was so scared._

Winry has never been more frightened in her life. 

But if she doesn't move right now, Ed is going to die.

At some point, she or Granny cleared out the table from plates and glasses and cutlery and the man in the armor followed her inside. Who, why, how - she’ll ask those questions later. The only thing on her mind is _Winry, move_.

She goes for the medical kit they keep in the workshop ( _move faster_ ). Ed is placed down on the table. Granny makes a tourniquet out of a towel - there’s no time to look for anything else; he’s bleeding out from where his left leg should have been, and the entirety of his right arm is gone too. His face is pale, so pale, his forehead gleams with sweat, there is a smear of red on his cheek about the size of her hand and he won’t stop screaming. The armored man keeps saying he’s sorry over and over again. _Ask later. Move now_.

They half cut half rip his shirt and hastily peel off the thin makeshift bandages wrapped around the stumps. It’s a complete amputation, almost cirurgical, as if the limbs had been sliced clean off. Winry can even see the _bone_. _How did this happen? No, don’t think about it now._ Ed whimpers and writhes with pain, and her heart threatens to escape her body through her throat. _Ask later_. There is blood all over the table linen, the floor - she can smell it in the air. _Don’t think about it. Move!_

Granny barks instructions, her voice muffled by agonized moaning. They need to clean the wound and stop the bleeding - there is _so much blood_ -, but compression won’t do. They’re running out of time. He’s already lost too much blood. _Move_. He’ll go into shock. Fetch some clean water and cloth. _Move faster._ Get him something to bite down on. Take out the gauze. Turn on the stove. Hold him down. There’s a coppery taste in her mouth. _If you don’t move, he’ll bleed to death right before your eyes._ She can’t think about that. Her arms seem so heavy. The world is a little blurry. Breathing feels incredibly hard. _Winry, move!_

Ed shrieks and squirms at every touch of the cloth to his maimed body, but she has to make sure the gash is cleaned. The white fabric turns scarlet so fast, too fast, and it feels too warm on her hands. The water on the bowl is so _red,_ she needs to -

He stops moving on the table. 

Winry bites her lip so hard it splits. He is _not dead_. He’s _not_. She puts both hands on his shoulders to keep him still as Granny rushes to the head of the table with a sterilized pan, still shining orange from the heat, and presses it down firmly to his bleeding leg. There is no time to look away.

The screams return, panicked, more horrifying, and Ed claws at her with his remaining hand in desperation. He hits her chest and her face and her neck with surprising strength and it’s so hard to hold on, with her grip so slippery, so shaky, but she can’t let go. She won’t. She won’t. She _won't_.

Granny pulls the pan away. Ed’s body goes slack under her hands. Winry lets out a wail. 

She wants to sink to the floor and cry. She raises a hand to her mouth and regrets it immediately after and she wants to know _why_ , but there is no time. 

They still have to do his shoulder.

-

When it’s over, Winry runs to the bathroom and empties her gut on the toilet.

She’s trembling as if she were diseased. Her hands just won’t stay still. With her face glued to the seat, the smell of iron and antiseptic and vomit mix and burns her nostrils, but still Winry cannot conceive the thought of getting up. She clings to the toilet like a lifeline even as her legs go numb beneath her and her back cramps in its twisted position.

For a minute or an hour or ten, Winry keeps her eyes squeezed shut and contemplates the possibility of it all being just a nightmare, and the echo of her own sobs against the porcelain distracts her from the soft clunking of metal in the other room. Slowly or suddenly (she can’t really tell, and she supposes it doesn’t matter either way), the door creaks open. 

_“Winry?”_

The man in the armor. 

His voice rings unpleasantly in her ear - too unsure and youthful, clashing with his imposing figure, yet another aspect of the night that is horribly illogical. She doesn’t look up. He’s not supposed to be here. In her childish logic, maybe if she ignores him, he’ll go away. 

He seems determined to prove her wrong.

“Winry, are you okay?” He places a massive hand on her shoulder, covering almost the entirety of her back, then another under her elbow, and helps her up very gently. Winry is too faint to resist, or to question how he knows her name. When she lifts her head, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror behind him, and starts crying again.

Any remaining hope or illusion that the night was all but a bad dream is shattered immediately. The evidence is scattered across her body, staining every inch of her dress, her face, her neck. Her skin is chalk white, drained of all color, like something from a horror story. Ed’s blood is all over her hands, smeared and drying across her palms. Her stomach churns at the sight.

“... don’t worry, Granny will be back soon. Do you need to -”

"Wait… who - who _are_ you?” Her eyes still study her reflection in shock. Her own voice sounds terrified, ragged, foreign. 

“Winry, it’s _me!_ It’s Alphonse!” 

The sound of her friend’s name snaps her out of her trance. Finally, she looks at him. _It’s Alphonse_. But it _can’t be_ Alphonse. Alphonse Elric is a scrawny ten year old boy who only barely reaches her chin, soft faced and bony elbowed. He’s just finished losing his baby teeth. The person in front of her nearly takes up all the space in the bathroom and is almost as tall as the ceiling. 

“Al…? You’re inside? How…?” Winry’s mouth opens and closes then opens again in confusion. Alphonse shouldn’t be able to move the armor’s right leg if he tried, let alone control its entire body with such ease.

“Not exactly.” He kneels down slowly, like he’s dealing with a wild animal, and Winry supposes she must look the part. Something about the movement seems almost self conscious, too, but she can’t see his face so there’s nothing but his body language to back up her suspicions.

“Please”, his small, metallic, _familiar_ voice reverberates as two enormous hands rise to remove the helmet, “don’t freak out.”

She has to blink once, twice, take a step closer to get a better view and then squint her eyes to make sure she didn’t miss anything. It’s empty. 

Instead of her friend, all Winry finds inside is a small circle placed directly behind the armor’s throat guard. A tiny symbol locked in place by intersecting pentagons. Drawn in blood. Winry is no expert - she doesn’t know any more about the subject than she did when she was a bored five year old scribbling with chalk on a basement floor, but she recognizes it immediately as an alchemy seal. Her vision falters.

The void calls out her name.

She bends at the waist and throws up again. 

-

( _Come on, dear, you’re doing great, hold on just a little longer_ is what her grandmother says as they go up to the second floor clutching each other tightly. Granny helps her peel off her bloody clothes and into the bathtub, whispering words of soft encouragement as if to soothe a crying infant. Winry’s fingernails stamp half-moons on the flesh of her upper arms. _You’re okay, stay with me, it’s all right._

Winry scrubs herself raw with the soft sponge. She sits with her knees pressed to her chest, skin pink instead of red, recoiling at the taste of blood and bile in her mouth, seeing the world through blurred lenses. Her jaw still throbbed a little where Ed had struck her, but Winry is only vaguely aware of it. Granny vigorously cleans her own hands over the sink and then wipes at something wet on her cheek once, twice - she is vaguely aware of that, too. 

It’s too long and not long enough before either of them moves, their breathing slow and uneven, their minds held hostage by the horrible events of the night. Then Granny springs up, cracking her bones. She turns to look at Winry, face grave, shoulders squared.

“Come, child”, she says, wiping her palms on her apron. “There is still work to be done. I’m going to need your help.”)

-

Winry finally has her questions answered, and then she wishes she hadn’t.

-

Granny calls the physician from Merton, the closest neighboring town to the north. He can’t make the trip overnight, but he prepares a list of instructions and supplies so they can manage until he is available. The man - the armor - _Alphonse_ moves Edward to the guest room downstairs, and then he sets off with Granny to help her carry whatever they need to get from the pharmacy. Winry gets the first shift watching Ed. 

She’s even more terrified than she was a couple of hours ago as she kneels down at his bedside to wipe his face with a wet rag. The ends of his golden hair are matted with so much blood they look black, and it takes her twice the time and effort to clean it without completely drenching his pillow. She’s more careful than she probably needs to be, but Winry can't handle the thought of hurting him any more.

In a twisted, horrible way, Winry is thankful for his spasms and twitches. This feels too much like a vigil, with the candles on the nightstand and the quiet of the world. She feels so lost, so useless on the floor waiting for Granny and Al to come back, for Ed to wake up, for something, for anything.

In that moment, her parents’ absence is like a gaping wound. Mom and Dad would have known what to do. _He has to make it through the night,_ the doctor had said. All they can do now is try to bring his fever down and _wait_. 

As Winry rubs off a bloody fingerprint from Ed’s chin, she realizes bitterly that this is what the boys’ mysterious research had amounted to. After years of secrecy and dedication, their precious alchemy had pulled the world from under them all. 

Tears for a ragdoll, a chalk circle for a little metal bird, the frozen pond, Mrs. Curtis’ miraculous dam - she remembers thinking of alchemy as something otherworldly and fantastic, even though Edward would roll his eyes at her supposed ignorance and preach _deconstruction, reconstruction, equivalent exchange_.

It’s clear now, painfully so, that she had been wrong. The things Winry has seen tonight could never be the result of anything wonderful or magical.

But what could possibly be equivalent about _this?_

-

Ed wakes up hours later, delirious, shivering, calling out his brother’s name between hiccups and sobs - _it’s all my fault, I’m so sorry, Al, it’s my fault, I shouldn’t have done it, forgive me, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I made a mistake, Al, I’m sorry, I’m sorry -_ and she can’t even tell if the dampness of his face are tears or sweat or both.

The moon hangs in the sky like an angry eye, the only other witness to his litany of anguish. Winry holds his hand until his strength gives out again, biting the neckline of her shirt to keep her own from escaping.

_I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry._

-

Between watching Edward, feeding him and changing his bandages, it takes her and Alphonse nearly two days to wash the blood from the kitchen floor (the table is too far gone to be salvaged, but Al transmutes them a new one before they can think to tell him not to). 

They do most of the work at night, when it’s Granny’s turn to stay with Ed. Al still knows his way around the house perfectly, but he knocks over the furniture in every room more often than not, like he’s still not used to his size. Neither is Winry. It feels illicit to speak, and no one wants to sleep, so they scrub the floors instead of hovering awkwardly in the corners of the room between shifts.

-

On the third night, they find out Alphonse doesn’t really have a choice in the matter.

-

On the fourth, Winry realizes that she doesn’t, either, but not because her body won’t let her. It’s in her mind where the problem lies. Every time she puts her head down on her pillow, the sound of Edward’s shrieks of pain seem to follow her into her room. She hears it hours into the night, ringing like the echo of Al's armor-toned voice.

(Most nights they are not only memories.)

-

When Ed finally, really comes to, he sits up straight on the bed, quietly, and looks down at the bedsheets covering his lower half. He does not lift them up.

The doctor tells them the worst of it is over. He survived, he’s awake, they just have to take care of the wounds now. Wash them with clean water and change the dressing twice a day. Call his number again if there’s anything unusual. He should be alright. Simple as that.

But _everything_ is unusual about this. Ed barely even reacts when they change his bandages - he keeps his head down and only nods when Granny asks if it’s okay to move his leg. He doesn’t flinch whenever Winry’s fingers get caught on a knot in her feeble attempts to detangle his hair (she does it on purpose out of frustration, once, just to see if he’ll retaliate like he should, and then regrets it immediately. Ed doesn’t seem to notice).

He stares at the wall a lot, or at the ceiling, or at his IV, or anywhere but her and Granny and Al. It’s hard to get him to speak, and nearly impossible to get him to eat. It’s not long before his skin seems to hang from his bones, as if someone had taken a knife to his face, carving away his cheekbones, sharpening his chin, thinning his mouth.

Winry had always had a few good inches on Ed, but he had never looked smaller before. He was always big and large, this creature of energy and determination who swept through every room like a gut wind, who could overpower everyone with a glare. 

Edward never looked this small in her eye, not like this.

-

If Winry thought herself somewhat of a night owl, over the next few weeks she turns nearly nocturnal. She makes a refuge for herself in the lamp-lit workshop, drilling and trimming and outfitting the nights away. Al joins her most of the time, and she teaches him the difference between screwdrivers and wrenches, bolts and studs, oil and grease.

When she doesn’t have any more projects to work on and the screaming in her mind still hasn’t dwindled down, they move to the kitchen and read together. Al can’t really make sense of Reznik’s _The Mechanic’s Handbook,_ so he retrieves his father’s alchemy volumes from his house (for all the good they had done) and Winry pulls out the old textbooks from the shelf. She makes notes on her journal and mouths the words to herself in an old, silent ritual: _femur, talus, tibula, fibula._

It’s a little harder to concentrate when he talks to her, but Winry doesn’t have it in her to tell him to stop. She tries to keep up and engage whenever he wants to share with her his thoughts on _The Tale of the Eastern Sage_ with the hushed tone they have grown used to speaking in.

Winry has to learn how to read him by his posture, by the way his voice rises and the way his breath hitches. She has built her life around metal limbs, and she does wonder fleetingly how much of his body is like automail, but she refuses to think of it as anything like studying a machine. He’s still curious and gentle, still quiet and smart, still her friend. He’s still _Alphonse,_ the only person in the world who could make a spike covered armor suit seem docile.

It both soothes her and freaks her out, the way he’s the same and he’s not.

-

(It’s a feeling that remains willfully unseen and unnamed, because she still refuses to acknowledge it: Winry knows she can’t keep this up forever. And when her body finally gives in to the strain of one too many sleepless nights, Al’s won’t, not ever again. 

He’ll be alone in the dark, and there is not a single thing she can do about it.)

-

Nothing stays a secret for long in Resembool. 

It takes very little time for people to start talking about what tragedy befell the Elric brothers. The first rumor that goes around is that the plague was back, and the boys had fallen victim to the same illness that claimed her mother. It dies down as quickly as it started, and then there is talk about a band of dangerous Ishvalan survivors who could have broken into their house, and then the townspeople decide on an accident involving alchemy. Thankfully, the space between houses and the quiet nature of the area allow them not to have to explain that fateful night's events in detail.

Their little corner of the East had only been home to very few alchemists, and none as talented as Mr. Hohenheim and his sons. While people are scared of what they can’t explain, it is not their way to be cruel. Not in this town, at least. Their neighbors show up at the door to ask if the boys are doing okay, and some even bring homemade dishes, like Mrs. Adler and the old couple who has lived in the farm down the hill since before Winry was even born. 

But there was a low murmur, that had become a grumble, that had become a hiss, that was currently simmering at a dull roar, about how it had served them right to be punished for messing with the ungodly thing that was alchemy.

When Winry hears it said out loud by a boy about her age on her way home from the market, she decides to make him eat his words with her fist.

The old anger rises within her, makes the blood rush red-hot to her head. It’s a messy struggle - she’s not a violent person by nature and it’s her first time ever throwing a real punch, but Winry had watched Ed and Al grapple almost every day for the past two years and though he is taller than her, the boy doesn’t really seem to know what to do with his own gawky limbs either.

She comes out on top and he sprints uphill in a fit of tears the second the loosens her grip on his wrist.

Winry tells Granny what happened sitting in the living room with skinned knuckles and a bloody nose as Alphonse looks for the first-aid kit, but there is no scolding. “Don’t you go making this a habit”, her grandmother simply states, arms folded over her chest.

She's only a little bit ashamed, but not nearly enough to regret it.

(And then Granny brushes Winry’s bangs back and says: “Well done, dear.”)

-

Since the funeral, Winry has only stopped by the cemetery three times, and only walked all the way to her parents’ tombstones once - not much sense in visiting empty graves, she figured. But something about the lingering wrongness of reading her mother’s books in the dark reminds her of the tragedy that has long set itself into her bones, and it carries Winry to her family’s neglected resting place.

It’s a feeling that just over a month ago would have sent her running up the hill to sit on the swing with Al. A month ago, back when they would still fit on the seat together, when Alphonse wasn’t seven feet tall and made entirely of armor.

Winry has known for years that someday the two of them would outgrow their sanctuary beneath the oak tree, but it’s too soon. She’s not ready. He’s ten, still only ten, and it’s far too soon. 

With her arms holding her knees tightly against her chest, Winry finds herself longing for her mother’s embrace, for her father’s gentle caresses. The memories are blurry, faded with time, and she misses them so fiercely that she feels like she could do anything to see them again just one last time. It’s a realization that strikes her like lightning and hurts as it would - _Edward and Alphonse had._ She curls deeper into herself.

They hadn’t been ready, none of them. It wasn’t fair. There was no equivalence, no justice at all.

(How long until Al's face fades away, too? How long until she forgets what his smile used to look like? How long until Ed does?)

Winry hasn’t been here in a year, and for almost as long she’s kept herself from crying over her parents, since Granny had told her that the more tears you shed, the more they feel sad in the next world, too. But if Mom and Dad are really watching her from wherever the dead go, maybe they’ll understand why she can’t help herself just this once.

-

It’s nearing twilight when Granny comes to take her home. Something about her seems uncharacteristically tired, almost worn out as she approaches the graveyard slowly. Her pipe is absent from her mouth. When she sinks to the ground next to Winry, it’s impossible to miss the trail of dried tears on her cheeks. They have matching red noses. 

“I never thought I’d find you here, of all places.”

It’s not a question, so Winry doesn’t answer. Explaining would get them nowhere. Instead, she inches closer to Granny and nestles her head against the rugged fabric of her dress. For several moments they do not speak, and the sound of leaves rustling in the wind fills the silence between them. Winry realizes this is the first time she’s been truly alone with her grandmother since - 

“You scared me half to death, you know”, and this time Granny’s voice cracks. 

Winry buries her face further in Granny’s shoulder in shame. Granny’s sheer resolve has been the only reason the both of them have been able to endure the nightmare their lives have become without completely alling apart for so long, but only now Winry sees how much of a toll it has taken on her. How heavy it must be to carry them all on her weary shoulders. 

“I’m sorry -”, Winry tries, but it simply doesn’t suffice. “I’m so sorry, Granny. I didn’t mean to worry you, I -”

“It’s okay. It’s not your fault, child.” Granny cups her jaw with a cold palm and strokes her hair with another. The gesture is meant to be comforting, but it ends up making Winry feel like even more of a burden. There’s a sob trapped in her throat, and she tries to make herself swallow it, but it still slips free.

Her voice comes out so small and muffled she can barely hear herself. “I didn’t mean to make things harder for you. I’m sorry.”

Winry’s breath comes in harsh pants, rasping in her ears. Gently, her head is pulled away from its hiding place. Granny waits for it to quiet down patiently, quietly. _It’s okay, dear,_ and then again and again, steady and sure while Winry is anything but. The world reflects purple-pink-orange on her spectacles. 

“I couldn’t do this without you, my girl.” Granny’s eyes drift away for a second, to the spot behind them where Winry knows is _Yuriy Rockbell, (1873 - 1908)_ , and then they are firmly set on Winry’s face again. “None of this. There is nothing to forgive.”

It’s okay, dear, and then again and again.

-

The leaves change color and fall from the trees, the days grow shorter, the weather becomes colder. Winry turns eleven. 

A snowstorm hits Resembool. 

Eastern Amestris hasn’t seen cold like this in five years, and she remembers the joy she felt when she was just a little girl, snowflakes melting on her tongue. She sees that joy through the window now, stamped on other children’s faces as they build snowmen with their families, the hardness of the glass beneath her fingers. She tries not to look at them too much, this faded photograph, this off-color copy.

(A small part of her considers, wistfully, stepping outside just to see if she can still make clouds from her breath in that way she faintly recalls would make her mother laugh. But there is no laughter this time around, Al is trapped in a metal suit, Ed is too weak to leave the bed and half the people who should be here are gone.)

She wants to keep her happy memories untainted. She doesn’t go outside. 

The glass remembers it when she takes her hand away.

-

It takes her less than two seconds to decide that she does not like Colonel Mustang.

He comes into her home, where they have not spoken louder than the absolute necessary for months, barking orders and forcing his way through the door in his blue uniform and black boots, and immediately she wishes him gone. 

Winry is tasked with entertaining his subordinate while Granny and the boys talk to him in the kitchen. Despite her general aversion to soldiers, she finds Lieutenant Hawkeye to be pleasant company, with her polite smile and quiet manners. Winry notices she has pretty eyes and a delicate face, and the pearl studs that adorn her ears compliment her cropped hair nicely. She holds her teacup with both hands. But there’s something about her stiff posture, the way she holds herself, that reminds Winry of the soldiers who had taken her parents away, and the somber expression on the Lieutenant’s face tells her exactly what she had been afraid of. A blue uniform, she's learned, never bears good news. 

This time, they had come for Ed and Al.

-

Winry knows Edward’s decision before he makes it. 

There is something about him that changes the moment Mustang and Hawkeye leave. She can’t put her finger on it exactly, but it’s there, like a hum in the air you can’t quite ignore. It’s in the set of his brow when he wheels himself back to his room, in the way his eyes no longer seem so empty. He even manages to sit up straighter on the bed and eat more than half his bowl of soup.

It only takes him a day to say it out loud. 

-

“I have to do this.”

Winry is kneeled at his bedside cutting up fresh bandages to wrap around his leg, and the sound of his voice nearly makes her drop the scissors to the floor. It wavers in the space between them, raspy with disuse, like a neglected gear that hasn’t been greased in too long. There is a sense of finality to his words that sends a shiver down her spine. 

Ed keeps his frown aimed at the night sky out the window. She isn’t sure if he’s talking to her or to himself, but this is the most she’s heard him speak in months, so she’ll take what she can get. Winry nods, “I know”, even though she doesn’t, not really. 

What she knows is that it means he has to leave. She knows it means he’ll join the military, with the Colonel and Ms. Riza, who has shot someone before, and their countless colleagues who have, too. It means the soldiers have taken even more from Winry. Ed and Al are not her brothers, but they are still a part of her. They are still family.

“It’s my fault… for getting Al into this mess. If there’s any way I can make this right, any chance at all… I _have_ to try.” Ed finally turns to look at her.

Winry's throat dries up, and she tightens her grip on the scissors.

His face is grave, tearful, pained. Something in the back of her mind screams: this is wrong. She’s seen this expression before, heard this tone a long time ago. There is something all too familiar about this. Familiar and horrifying.

 _It means he has to leave_.

She remembers what Ms. Riza had told her earlier. _It’s his choice now, whether to stay still or move forward._ And Winry knows - she _knows_ she’s being selfish. It’s as if she swallowed a bad thing, and now it’s got its hands inside her. She has no right to resent him for this.

“I know”, she repeats, unsure if to him or to herself. 

It’s a choice, but the other option doesn’t apply to him. She has watched Edward waste away on this very bed for months, drowning in guilt because he believed he could never do anything about his brother’s situation. Colonel Mustang’s visit only brought Winry terrible flashbacks, but for Ed it meant something else entirely. It's given him hope. If he stays still, it will destroy him.

Winry forces that horrible feeling down her throat, cages it at the pit of her stomach. _Stay down,_ she wills it, _this is much bigger than you._ She thinks about Alphonse, reading alone in the kitchen, waiting for her. Alphonse, alone in the dark.

Winry can’t save Al, but Edward just might. And in the process, hopefully he can save himself too. She ties the binding around his stump and secures it tightly with a knot.

She’s going to help him, she decides. In whatever way she can. 

-

The next morning, Ed announces to Winry and Granny he wants automail. They have all his measurements taken and the parts ordered in the afternoon, and by evening the port surgery is scheduled. 

At night, the Rockbells begin their work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to formally apologize for completely butchering emergengcy surgery procedures in the first section of this chapter lmao. I am absolutely no doctor and this is just the way I envisioned this scene; the point wasn't medical accuracy but the distress Winry, aged eleven, must have felt at the moment. But anyways! I originally meant for this chapter to go as far as the boys burning down the house and leaving Resembool, but when I began outlining the rest of my draft it felt a little like too much information in one go. Still not sure if it was the right call but we'll see how it goes.
> 
> Thank you so much for sticking with me - again. Your feedback would mean the world! :)

**Author's Note:**

> This silly character study-ish piece was born from my need for Winry centric fics and a bunch of headcanons I had about the trio's childhood in Resembool. I abolutely adore Winry's character and I feel like her trauma and her struggles are oftentimes overlooked (considering this girl has been trough some serious shit). 
> 
> The timeline is as canon compliant as I was able to make it; all the information was taken from FMA:B & the wiki. Winry's drachman ancestry in this fic was inspired by a post on tumblr about her father's name being russian/drachman, and Pinako raising her son as a single mother was another personal hc. The summary is derived from a scene in the manga in which Sarah Rockbell says "we Rockbell women are renowned for our courage and tenacity."
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me so far! Find me on tumblr @koizillaa :))


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